Jack stared at Shabbir. "How can he be a martyr if he's not dead?"
"The traitors are offering him up to appease America!"
Jack shook him. "Forget that. Wrath of Allah—the ones who gunned down those people at LaGuardia. What do you know about them?"
"They too are soldiers of God! They are heroes!"
Jack remembered the litter of dead he'd seen around the baggage carousel—remembered one death in particular—and wanted to throttle this piece of crap. With no little difficulty he resisted the impulse and jammed the duct tape back over his mouth.
"What do we do now?" Zeklos said.
"We?" Miller shook his head. "There is no 'we' as far as you're concerned. Just me and Davis."
"Don't forget Jack," Davis said.
A glare was Miller's only reply.
"I don't know about you guys," Jack said, "but I think the best course is to tape him up, take off, and call the feds."
Miller sneered. "Yeah, right. So they can take him to the Gitmo Country Day School and give him a special diet and a Koran and a cleric and an ACLU asshole to hold his hand. You know how I'd handle these guys—the few who somehow survived? They'd get a cinderblock box smaller than this, no window, and a hole in the floor. And special diet? They'd get a special diet: Every day I'd whip them up bacon for breakfast, sausage for lunch, and pork chops for dinner—no substitutions, please. Eat or starve."
"You wouldn't get any argument from me," Davis said. "But we're not at Gitmo and this guy obviously isn't working alone. The feds can use him to find the rest of his posse."
"We don't need to find his posse." Miller waved his arms at the drums. "We've got their toys, and without their toys they can't play."
Jack said, "The Oculus saw them stuffing vests with plastique."
Davis pointed to the corner. "They're over there. Six of them packed full, salted with one-inch wood screws and ready to go. But that's small-time stuff. Take a look at this."
He led Jack to the nearest drum and lifted its lid. Jack looked inside. He saw reddish gunk up to the three-quarter level. A cell phone lay on top. A wire ran from the phone into the gunk.
Jack felt a jolt of alarm as he leaned over the rim. He knew that wire led to a detonator or two.
"I hope to hell that phone is turned off."
"It is. Every barrel's rigged like this. And don't worry, I made sure all the phones are off."
"Then they're all set to go."
Jack could see how it would go down. They load the drums into car trunks, stall the cars on bridges near a support or midshaft in a tunnel or two, hitch a ride away, and then call the rigged cell phone. The ringer sends a current to the detonators and BLAM!—collapsed tunnels, and bridges with severe structural damage.
And rampant panic.
Jack said, "The Oculus saw suicide bombings, but these are rigged for remote detonation. Which means they're probably saving the suicide vests for the buses and subways, after they've blown the cars."
Davis was nodding. "And that means they don't have bodies to spare. They've got half a dozen vests here. Probably means only half a dozen in their cell."
"Smart," Jack said. "Keep it small. Keep it tight. Fewer chances of a leak or a screw-up."
Davis turned back to Miller. "Jack's right. This is way too big and too well planned for our little crew. We're stretched to the limit as it is. We've got to turn him in."
Miller shook his head. "I'm sick of jawing about this."
He kicked the Arab onto his belly and stomped hard on the back of his neck. Jack heard the crunch of shattering vertebrae. The guy twitched once and then lay still.
"Now you're a martyr," Miller said.
Jack felt nothing for the terrorist. He didn't know how much blood he had on his hands when he died, but he'd have been bathing in it if he'd had his way. And if Jack had found out that he'd been part of the LaGuardia Massacre, his own foot would have been on that neck.
"For Christ sake. Miller!" Davis shouted. "That's the second time—!"
They all jumped as the dead man's cell phone began to ring.
"Must be Allah calling to tell him he ain't getting his seventy-two virgins."
Davis was still fuming. "Why the hell did you do that?"
Miller's lips parted into what he probably thought was a beatific smile. Not quite.
"I just want peace is all. You know how I hate arguments. And now there's nothing to argue about."
This is why I work alone, Jack thought.
11
Jack listened to Davis and Miller dicker to a compromise: They wouldn't call the feds yet; instead they'd watch the storage area and make the call when the terrorists showed. Miller wanted a vantage point far enough away that they wouldn't be seen and scare them off.
"That way we nab them all," Miller said. "I'll feel better about that." Jack was thinking about how long it would take the agents to get to Staten Island from the FBI field office in downtown Manhattan. On a Sunday night, with flashers going, pretty damn quick. Even quicker with a copter.
After surveying the lay of the land they decided the best watch nest was the roof of a ten-story apartment house about half a mile inland. It promised a clear view of the storage lot and of this cubicle in particular.
If tomorrow was indeed detonation day, the terrorists would have to load up today or tonight. More likely tonight.
They left Miller to watch the cubicle while Jack, Davis, and Zeklos raced to Red Hook for field glasses and food for the surveillance. Jack pulled his handy-dandy tool kit from his trunk, then the two of them headed back to Staten Island sans Zeklos.
"I had to side with Miller this time," Davis said. "Zek's not going to contribute anything to the surveillance, so he shouldn't be along."
Jack said nothing, but the lost look on the little man's face had followed him all the way back to the car.
The apartment building was a brick-faced, low-income box. Getting in was easy: Someone had broken the lock on the front entry doors and so they waltzed right through.
The door to the roof, however, presented a problem.
NO EXIT ALARM WILL SOUND
Jack checked its edges and found the magnetic contact sensor along the top. It had been crudely installed, leaving the wires exposed.
Davis grunted. "Probably works about as well as everything else in this place. That is, not at all."
"I wouldn't want to count on that," Jack said. "This is too important."
He heard a metallic snikt! behind him. He turned and saw that Miller had flicked open a knife. The overhead light reflected off the four-inch blade.
"Just cut the wires and forget about it."
Jack grabbed his arm as he raised the knife.
"That'll only work on an open-circuit model. This is probably closed."
Davis frowned. "So what?"
"Open circuit means there's no flow-through of current. The circuit is held open by the magnetic contact on the door. Opening the door removes the magnet and the circuit snaps closed, sending a signal to the alarm. Cutting the wires works just fine for them. But the closed-circuit model has continuous flow-through. Cut the wires and you're busted. Almost everything's closed circuit these days. How come you guys don't know this?"
Davis shrugged. "Stealth isn't a big part of our MO."
"So what do we do?" Miller said. "Stand around with our thumbs up our asses while those Islamic turds load up their cars?"
"We can jump the wires, but that takes time. So let's try this."
He opened his tool kit and checked through the side pockets until he found a quarter-size disk. He held it up.